


Come away, O Human Child (the Choice remix)

by Ahavaa



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: AU, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 15:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4227249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahavaa/pseuds/Ahavaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy's in Narnia.  She's not dead.  </p>
<p>In England, the difference is too difficult to explain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come away, O Human Child (the Choice remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Choice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3215003) by [celeste9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9). 
  * In response to a prompt by [celeste9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9) in the [remixmadness2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2015) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> No safe story, previous remixes are 'The Haunting of Captain America' and 'The Anatomical Position'.
> 
> Fandoms include: Primeval, MCU, Merlin, Suikoden, Agents of SHIELD, Arrow, Final Fantasy VIII, Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, the 100, Temeraire, A Song of Ice and Fire, Final Fantasy Tactics, and a few others.

It was not so unusual, in those days, for a child to go missing. 

It was far rarer - and impossible to explain or account for - a girl who went missing in her family's house, in an instant. There were no traces. All of her things remained in the rooms; all that was missing were her one pair of shoes, one dress, one set of hair ribbons. Eustace and Edmund had a bad few hours, when the police were called. 

Eustace watched Edmund become sober and grave, like a man instead of a half-grown boy, as he continued to give the same answers that were no answers, not at all: _i haven't seen her_ and _i don't know where she is_. The conclusion - the only conclusion that could be drawn - was that Lucy had run away of her own accord or had been taken. 

His parents watched him more carefully, after that terrible day that Lucy vanished. 

**

Edmund had seen Susan furious and he'd seen her distraught before. (Most of the memories had the hazy, dim quality of dreams, at this point in his life; he felt _old_ , weighed down by the lives that he hadn't lived and the knowledge that in this world, he never would hold a sword.)

"How can I tell Mother," Susan said, "that there won't be a body?" 

"It's not like that, Sue," Peter said. He looked the way you do when you'd been up all night working at an equation, perhaps, and it had come out unbalanced a hundred times. Exhausted, yes, and like a king, yes, and like someone who couldn't do what needed to be done. "She's not -" 

"She's not _dead_ ," Susan said. Her hair was long and dark and her lips were blood, blood red, and her skin was pale like snow under the early morning sun. "No. But she's not _here_ , and how does one explain the difference?" 

"There's no point to trying, my lady," Edmund said. 

 

****

 

Eustace spoke about it Edmund, once or twice: "how do you bear it?" he asked. 

"You mustn't think of it as something to be borne," Edmund said. "You'll go mad, or you'll give up." 

"You were a king," he said. His cousin looked very brown, and worn, that summer. "I was a dragon." It felt like the words were the wrong shape in his mouth. "I feel...dragonish, sometimes." 

"Yes," Edmund said. "If you give yourself time to think, yes." 

"Susan - "

"Susan and Lucy didn't always like each other," Edmund said, "but they were a team, I think. The girls." He shrugged. "Susan won't have anything to do with me; she thinks I should've made Lucy come back." 

 

**

 

" _Oh_ ," Eustace said, and Jill didn't know what came over him, at that moment; he looked sick, and shaken, like he'd lost something dear to him. "Queen _Lucy_?" he asked. 

"The oldest queen I've ever seen," she said; if she'd known him just a little better she would've put a hand out to steady him. He looked like he might faint. 

"My cousin," he gasped, "but how could she be so - so _old_ , what a little fool I've been." 

 

**

 

He saw Susan back from America, after he and Pole saved Prince Rilian. She took one look at him and turned her face away. She was speaking to a young man in uniform, tall and slim, and for half a moment he fancied it was a Narnian uniform. It was in the way he carried himself, like he was proud, like he felt joy in the business of war: he wondered if Susan saw it, too, or if she wanted a way to avoid speaking to him. 

"Susan, I saw her," he said, later that night. 

She stared into the fire. "She would be twenty," Susan said, crisp and terrible, and Eustace realized what was happening, but he still meant to stop it. To wake Susan up, as best as he could. 

"She married Caspian," he said. "She was so old, Sue, she -"

"She's been gone for years," Susan said, dull, to the fire: "and the things that a young woman must do when she is alone in the world would certainly render her dead to her family; better she was dead entirely." 

"She had a son," Eustace continued, and Susan whirled on him. 

" _How can you be so cruel,_ " she said, and ran up stairs to the room Alberta had set aside for her.


End file.
